1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cutting jig and a cutting apparatus for cutting a plate material used when, for example, manufacturing a head suspension of a disk drive incorporated in an information processing unit.
2. Description of Related Art
A disk drive has rotatable disks such as magnetic or optical disks and head suspensions each supporting a read/write element to read and write data on a corresponding disk.
The head suspension is generally made of plate-like parts such as a base plate, a load beam, and a flexure. The parts of the head suspension partly overlap each other and are joined together at the overlapped portions.
For such head suspension, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-57723 discloses a manufacturing method in view of efficiency. According to this method, chain products are prepared for component parts of a head suspension in advance. Each chain product includes a plurality of the same parts that are chained together in a frame. Among the chain products, parts composing each head suspension are joined together to efficiently form a plurality of head suspensions that are chained together through the frames of the chain products. The chained head suspensions are cut from the frames into individual head suspensions.
In this method, chain sheets are preferably prepared for the chain products. Each chain sheet as a plate material includes a plurality of the same chain products that are chained together in a frame. From the chain sheet, individual chain products are cut with a die.
However, there are different types of head suspensions and parts for different disk drives that vary in shape and size, and therefore, a common die is not used among different types of head suspensions and parts.
In a case of a high-volume manufacturing, a special die is prepared fore given type of a head suspension. In a case of a low-volume manufacturing such as trial manufacture, however, it is hard to prepare such a special die considering the cost and the like.
In the low-volume manufacturing, individual chain products are cut from a chain sheet with scissors or a cutter blade. This deforms the individual chain products as well as chained parts thereof even if the cutting is carefully carried out. This deformation results in deteriorating a dynamic characteristics of a head suspension as a product.